Neuro-visual control in the Quake II game engine

The first-person-shooter Quake II is used as a platform to test neuro-visual control and retina input layouts. Agents are trained to shoot a moving enemy as quickly as possible in a visually simple environment, using a neural network controller with evolved weights. Two retina layouts are tested, each with the same number of inputs: first, a graduated density retina which focuses near the center of the screen and blurs outward; second, a uniform retina which focuses evenly across the screen. Results show that the graduated density retina learns more successfully than the uniform retina.